Sheree: Lesson Three

Lesson Plan Three:

The Objective for today’s lesson: Students will individually make connections to enhance understanding during a read-aloud within Best Practices in Reading, “Tornadoes.” Students will make text-to-text connections by finding common themes in author studies. According to Strategies that Work, students make text-to-text to more obvious elements of stories, such as characters or problems. Students will practice making text-to-text connections by using Venn-diagrams. Venn-diagrams will help students determine how characters, their personalities, themes or events are the same or different.

What students learned and which students struggled with the lesson?

Students learned how to compare and contrast stories using Venn-diagrams. They were able to make text-to-text connections between Tornadoes and Dangerous Storms (previous lesson). Some students struggled with going back to the text within Tornadoes and pulling out the important information. Tornadoes was an informational text; which was new genre for the class. I noticed that some students had difficulty recognizing the concepts within informational texts; topics in bold, maps, diagrams, sub-topics, etc.

What did you learn about your students’ literacy practices that extend beyond your objectives?

Students automatically started to compare Tornadoes to Dangerous Storms before we even started the Venn-diagrams. As a teacher, that lets me know they are making text-to-text connections on an independent level.

When and how will you re-teach the material to students who need additional support?

The students that need additional support will have to practice more with Venn-Diagrams. They have to learn how to go back to the text and pull out important information. I will give them lower-level informational text to work with first before moving them along.

If you were to teach this same lesson again, what would you do differently and how do you think the changes would improve students’ learning?

I will conduct a mini-lesson on how to address informational text before teaching this lesson again. This was a new genre for them and some students need a lot more practice.